The 5 Strangest Felonies Ever Committed by Animals

The best thing about being a wild animal, aside from being able to shit wherever you want, is that crimes that would get a human put away for decades are written off with a comical headline. Everything is hilarious when an animal does it, even if it would be considered a felony in the human world. For instance ...

#5. Crocodile Hijacks Plane

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While the Republic of the Congo in Africa is known for a lot of things -- like, um, talking gorillas, we guess? -- really good airline security is apparently not one of them. That's why, on a routine flight from Kinshasa to Bandundu, a passenger managed to smuggle a friggin' crocodile onto the plane. His plan was to sell the crocodile illegally, which makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about the surplus of crocodiles in Kinshasa versus the lack thereof in Bandundu.

The plane was a Czech L-410, a small propeller model favored for short-range passenger flights in Third World countries. L-410s are capable of holding approximately 20 passengers and a small crew -- none of whom, on this particular flight, seemed to notice the passenger attempting to board with a large, wriggling carry-on bag.

Samuel L. Jackson wouldn't say shit.

You see, he didn't try particularly hard to conceal the crocodile -- he just stuffed it into an oversized gym bag and hoped for the best. And he almost made it, too. But as the plane approached its destination, the crocodile finally decided that enough was enough, and also finally realized that a goddamn gym bag is no match for razor-sharp crocodile teeth. So that's when it burst out of the gym bag and started thrashing around the cabin like ... well, like a crocodile.

The flight attendant panicked and made a beeline for the cockpit. Which wouldn't have been so bad, had all the passengers not followed suit and stampeded right after her (hopefully leaving "there's a crocodile in my duffel" guy at the "there's a pissed-off crocodile right behind you" end of the line). The sudden shift in weight threw the small plane off balance and it promptly crashed into a house just a few hundred feet from its destination.

Getty"Ladies and reptiles, this is not a drill. Please take your seats, our fireball will be commencing shortly."

But our crocodile-cum-movie-villain wasn't done just yet -- believe it or not, it actually emerged from the crash unscathed. But this real-life Syfy Original Movie plot quickly came to an anticlimactic end when the crocodile was hunted down and dispatched by a witness who happened to have a machete handy (read: anyone who lives in the Congo). Because apparently machetes can even take out plane-crash-resistant super-crocodiles, which explains why they're the number one item on everybody's zombie apocalypse Christmas list.

#4. Moose Defaces Statue. With His Penis. For Eight Hours.

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As far as animal crimes go, defacing a statue should hardly even count. After all, birds practically paint them up into poo-rific masterpieces all day, every day, right? Well, when the statue is of a bison and the defacer in question is a moose, the term takes on a whole new meaning:

That's right, one day a bull moose saw the bison statue in front of Big Sky Ranch in Montana and thought to himself, in his tiny moose brain, "I'd hit that." So he did. For eight freaking hours. We're not sure if that's typical of moose lovin' or if this just happened to be a particularly virile specimen of moosekind, but either way it's damn impressive.

Several brave ranch hands eventually made an attempt to scare the moose off by throwing rocks at it, but that only seemed to spur the beast on. He just kept on keeping on, completely heedless of onlookers (including at least two photographers capturing the episode from different angles) and the eventual traffic jam the incident caused in front of the property.

By the time the moose was spent, the statue had suffered a broken left horn, hoof scratches on its sides and blood stains on its rear end (we told you this moose was a trooper). Oh, and the entire statue had also been pushed forward a full eight inches by the moose's mighty dong.

So the next time you get down about your own job, think about the person whose job it was to clean up that statue afterward.

Getty"We're going to need Clorox, liquor and one of those guides to writing a resume."

#3. Bear Steals Toyota Prius

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The McCarthy family was spending a quiet weekend at their vacation home in Lake Tahoe when, in the middle of the night, they were awakened by the sound of a car horn honking -- a car horn that sounded suspiciously like that of their own car, a Toyota Prius. When they looked outside, they noticed that the car was rocking, and also that there was a distinct grunting sound coming from inside.

GettyIn clear violation of the "Don't come a-knockin'" rule.

Mr. McCarthy investigated, and found that Papa Bear had gotten his big ass stuck inside a Baby Bear-sized car, and was none too pleased about it. The fact that fitting inside a Toyota Prius can be a challenge even for an average-sized human proved to be an even bigger problem for a bear -- a problem that the bear solved by simply tearing out the seats and discarding them. But once he was good and wedged in there, that's when the fun really started: The bear put the car in reverse and started backing it out of the driveway.

Now consider for a moment a bear's paw --

WikipediaYou can recreate this scenario at home by duct taping machetes to a frying pan.

-- and now that you've got that visualized, think about the size of the average automatic gear shift lever, and the process for putting a car in reverse: In most cars, you have to apply pressure to the brake, gently press the button on the gear shift lever and -- wait, what are we saying? We just told you a few sentences ago that the bear popped the seats out of the car like it was constructed from Lego blocks. If a bear wants to shift a car into reverse, a bear shifts a car into reverse.

Anyway, not only did the bear successfully shift the Prius into reverse, he also backed the car down the steep 25-foot driveway and across the street before crashing into some boulders in front of a neighbor's house. Apparently the crash jostled him loose, and the bear was able to squeeze out of the Prius and escape before the authorities arrived. And what followed was the most baffling call of some insurance agent's career.

Getty"I'm sorry, but your policy only covers Kodiak bears."

#2. Elephant Seal Humps Just, Like, Everything, Becomes Folk Hero

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If you thought you'd seen it all when we showed you a moose humping a bison statue, just wait till you get a load of Homer, the elephant seal who wreaked havoc on the good folks of Gisborne, New Zealand, back in 2000. You see, Homer had taken himself a liking to their little seaside town -- specifically, their port -- and didn't appear to have any intention of leaving.

The only drawback to Homer's new pad (for Homer, anyway) was the evident lack of elephant seal lady-folk in Gisborne, forcing him to come up with some creative solutions to satiate his base urges. Like humping cars. This of course didn't make the townsfolk overly happy, for obvious reasons: Picture your car, then picture a creature that weighs several hundred pounds having his way with it, and you can imagine the amount of damage Homer could do with his enormous seal penis.

After trashing several cars, a couple of boat trailers and a nearby tree with his nonstop humping, and kicking over a trash can (that last one just to be a dick, presumably), the townsfolk decided to try erecting barriers to contain Homer on the concrete boat ramp where he had taken up residence. Homer responded by charging to a restaurant across the road and fucking the power box into submission, temporarily causing a blackout. The next day, the barriers had mysteriously washed out to sea and Homer was found lying across the boat ramp in post-coital bliss -- either that, or he was still incapacitated from essentially having self-Tasered his own wang.

And apparently, old Homer got around. Once the media caught wind of his exploits and started spreading the story, a man in Christchurch -- several hundred miles away -- compared photos of a seal that had assaulted cars there several months earlier and pegged Homer as the culprit. Homer's infamy continued to spread through news outlets around the world, leading to his eventual worldwide celebrity status. He even had his own website at one point (don't bother, it's offline now, sadly).

#1. Moose Assaults Helicopter (and Wins)

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If researching this article has taught us anything, it's that the majestic moose might just be the least fuck-givingest animal out there. But don't take our word for it -- there are people way smarter than us who have devoted their entire lives to counting just how few fucks the moose gives (and probably other stuff, but we're boiling the job description down to its most important element here).

Getty"And substituting the terms, we arrive at our answer of three. A moose gives three fucks."

One such smart guy is biologist Kevin White, who in March of 2007 chartered a helicopter to take him to the tiny Alaskan community of Gustavus, where moose outnumber people 2-to-1. White and his crew were following an adult Alaskan bull moose, which are the largest moose in the world, typically topping seven feet tall and weighing in at over 1,300 pounds. White's goal was to tag this particular bull for identification purposes, so he shot it with a tranquilizer dart so he could get close enough to staple a tag to its ass.

Now for most creatures, after being shot in the neck with a dart full of sleepy-time juice from a high-powered rifle, the only sensible thing to do is to stumble for a bit before drifting off to dreamland. But this moose didn't get sleepy. No, this moose got pissed.

Getty"Ketamine? But where's the speed we ordered?"

White and the pilot followed the moose in the helicopter in an attempt to corral it and keep it from falling asleep in a spot where it might get injured. But just as they hovered nearby, expecting the moose to drop over at any moment, the moose decided to charge the helicopter. He made good use of the gigantic medieval weaponry that Mother Nature had so kindly installed right on top of his head, and he brought that motherfucker to the ground.

None of the humans involved were injured in the crash, but unfortunately the tussle with the helicopter's tail rotor left the moose wounded and he had to be put down. We like to believe that somewhere in moose heaven, he now has a helicopter mounted over his fireplace.

Getty"... and that's the last thing you see before you die: antlers, and some scientist crapping his pants."

Will Millar has written his first full-length novel, Infernal Machines, and you can find out more about it here. Or you can follow Will on Twitter.